06/05/23 06/05/23 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] amy: from new york, this is democracy now! pres. biden: the only way american democracy can function is through compromise and consensus. that is what i work to do as your president. to forge five person agreement where possible and where it is needed. amy: president biden addresses the nation just before setting a bipartisan bill to suspend the debt ceiling to avert a historic default. biden calls it a big win but

many progressives disagree. we will talk to david sirota of the lever. then we will speak to a father who has spent two decades trying to hold the billionaire sackler family accountable for their role in the opioid epidemic. >> eddie was a high school senior, normal kid. the first time i heard the word oxycontin my son was in his bed dead. amy: we will talk to ed bisch, the founder of rapp -- relatives against purdue pharma -- about the sacklers receiving immunity last week from civil lawsuits as part of a $6 billion settlement that will allow the founders of purdue pharma to preserve much of their fortune. all that and more, coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. in india, at least 275 people were killed and over 1000

injured in the eastern state of odisha friday when a packed passenger train crashed into an oncoming freight train, causing another passenger train to derail. the number of victims could rise as more bodies are identified. one 55-year-old survivor witnessed her daughter perish in the disaster. >> i daughter got buried under the iron in front of my eyes. i managed to stay in the corner but i was hit by an iron rod or something. i didn't know how to move such heavy iron. my daughter kept crying and died right in front of my eyes. amy: authorities say an electronic signaling system failure appears to be at fault as they start their investigation into one of the deadliest rail disasters in decades. many of the passengers were students or migrant and day laborers. the tragedy has put the safety of india's rail system, which carries some 8 billion passengers a year, in the spot light. while india has made substantial

investments into its transportation infrastructure, spending on track maintenance and other security measures has decreased. the ukrainian military says it is moving forward near bakhmut, which russia claimed it captured in may after months of bloody battles. this comes after russia said it repelled a ukrainian offensive in the donetsk region, killing hundreds of troops. russia's claims have not been verified and it's not clear if ukraine has yet launched its long-anticipated counter-offensive over the weekend, a russian air raid on the central city of dnipro injured over 20 people and killed a two-year-old girl according to ukrainian officials. the u.n. says over 525 children have been killed since the start of the invasion in february of last year. meanwhile, italian cardinal matteo zuppi is in kyiv today after pope francis appointed him to lead a papal peace mission to end the war in ukraine. sudan's army has brought in reinforcements as it seeks to defeat the rival paramilitary rapid support forces in khartoum.

the move has raised fears of intensified fighting in sudan's capital after a ceasefire agreement expired, leaving the two sides battling for control of a contested military base and other sites. elsewhere, heavy fighting continues in sudan's western darfur region where at least 40 people were killed and dozens more wounded over the weekend. witnesses say gangs of armed fighters have carried out widespread looting and terrorized civilians, worsening the humanitarian crisis. president biden signed legislation raising the debt ceiling saturday, averting a first-ever default on the national debt. pres. biden: no one got everything they wanted but the inert people got what they needed. we averted an economic crisis. an economic collapse. amy: the deal comes after drawn-out negotiations between biden and republican leaders, whom democrats blasted for taking the economy hostage to force spending cuts. the agreement cuts food assistance for hungry people and fast-tracks the fracked-gas mountain valley pipeline, while protecting tax cuts for the rich

and enriching defense -- electric contractors. we'll have more on this story after headlines. interior secretary deb haaland announced friday new oil and gas leases will not be permitted on public lands in and around the chaco canyon national historical park in new mexico. the ban will be in effect for 20 years but only affects new leases. it comes after decades of organizing by indigenous groups which consider chaco canyon a sacred site. three corporations that produce a class of toxic substances commonly called forever chemicals have agreed to pay $1.2 billion to settle liability claims brought by municipal water agencies who say the companies knowingly contaminated drinking water supplies around the united states. dupont and two spin-off companies, chemours and corteva, will pay into a fund to help remove the chemicals known as pfas, which can take centuries to break down in the environment. they're used in everything from food packaging to cosmetics to

fabrics and firefighting foam. pfas have been found in the blood of nearly all u.s. residents and in a majority of people around the world. they're linked to a host of health problems in humans, including liver damage, lowered fertility, asthma, thyroid problems, low infant birth weight, and cancer. delegates from more than 170 nations have agreed to draft the first global treaty aimed at reducing plastic waste after a week of u.n.-brokered negotiations in paris. delegates to the intergovernmental negotiating committee on plastic pollution will review the draft agreement at their next round of talks in november. environmental groups are calling on governments not to allow fossil fuel companies and other industry interest groups to water down the agreement. this is samoa's delegate addressing the forum on behalf of the alliance of small island states. >> small island developing states inherit much of plastic ice from across the globe. these plastics washed upon our

shores, the livelihoods of our people, under our tourism and fishery industries, among others and suffocate our ecosystems. we reiterate the urgent need for an agreement that is ambitious from the start, calm hands of across the lifecycle of plastics -- comprehensive across the lifecycle of plastics, and one that becomes more robust over time. amy: saudi arabia has agreed to cut oil production by a further 1 million barrels per day after a weekend meeting of opec+ members in vienna, austria. the move will likely push global oil prices higher. it follows cuts of an additional 3.7 million barrels of oil per day by opec+ over the past year. the biden administration has criticized the cuts, saying increased profits from higher energy prices could benefit russia. in senegal, at least 15 people have been killed after police began a crackdown on protests staged by supporters of opposition leader ousmane sonko. the crackdown began after a senegalese court on thursday

sentenced him to two years in prison over an alleged sexual assault. he has accused the government of manufacturing charges against him to derail his candidacy. sonko is popular among senegal's youth and a likely candidate in the 2024 presidential election. this is a student who joined protests in the capital dakar on friday. >> it is unfortunate. we don't want things to be like this because we all want to learn and finish the year. but since the state has done what it wants, we have our opinion. that's it. amy: in the german city of leipzig, dozens of people were arrested or detained over the weekend as police clashed with protesters and authorities sought to ban demonstrations following the conviction last week of an anti-fascist activist. 28-year-old lina e. received 5 years in prison for attacking neo-nazis. three others received sentences of two to three years. activists decried the violent crackdown on protests and public assembly. >> it is unbelievable

experiencing how repressive the state police are against anti-pashas protesters. it is the same response to climate activist. we are standing strong together in solidarity. amy: in california, authorities have launched an investigation after at least 16 asylum seekers were flown to sacramento friday in a private jet believed to have been arranged by the state of florida. the migrants, who are from and is well and colombia, were dropped off in front of a church with only a backpack-worth of belongings. the group had entered the u.s. through the texas border and were transported by bus to new mexico, where they were put on the chartered jet to california. officials say the migrants had paperwork appearing to link the flight to florida. california's attorney general said it was a state sanctioned kidnapping. last year, dozens of asylum seekers were coerced to go to martha's vineyard under the false promise they'd be given

jobs and housing. in more immigration news, customs and border protection officials refuse to call an ambulance for a girl who was sick. she been detained with her family by cbp for at least nine days before she died. her mother pleaded for help was ignored until the young girl had a seizure and was finally taken to the hospital where she was pronounced dead about an hour later. a federal judge ruled friday tennessee's law banning drag shows is unconstitutional. the trump-appointed judge said the legislation was overly broad and encouraged discriminatory enforcement. tennessee's law was signed by bill lee in march and comes as part of an onslaught of attacks on the rights of lgbtq people. on saturday, people who attended the pride event in franklin,

tennessee celebrated the ruling. this is drag performer cya inhale. >> having the answer finally delivered and that breath of fresh air, that weight off of her shoulders -- of our shoulders is lovely. there is still a fight [indiscernible] [indiscernible] . this is definitely a step in the right direction. amy: unionized workers across the west coast including los angeles have walked off the job as union negotiations demand better working conditions and benefits continue. and other labor news, the directors guild of america has reached a tentative contract agreement with hollywood studios covering pay, streaming residuals, and protections against ai, artificial intelligence. the writers guild of america remains on strike. journalists and staff working at gannett, the country's largest

newspaper chain, are leading a one-day strike as the media company is holding its annual shareholder meeting. workers are demanding shareholders to take a vote of no-confidence against mike reed, gannett's chief executive, and allow for new leadership. an amazon on friday abruptly fired union organizer jennifer bates, who's been a leading spokesperson of the unionization campaign by warehouse workers in bessemer, alabama. bates often spoke out against amazon's workplace safety issues and its attacks on unit efforts, including in congress and on democracy now! in 2021. >> the reason why we are organizing is because we need an even playing field. some of the conditions are being ignored by human resources, long work hours with only two breaks, long walks upstairs and downstairs. we want to be heard. we want to be treated like people and not be ignored when we have issues.

people are being fired without having opportunity to speak their side. amy: and those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. next up, president biden signs a bipartisan bill to suspend the debt ceiling to avert an historic default, calling it a big but many progressives disagree. we will speak with david sirota of the lever. stay with us. ♪♪ [music break]

amy: "lost cause" by beck. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. president joe biden has signed a debt ceiling deal into law that inverts a historic default by the united states. in his first address from the oval office, he said this was critical. pres. biden: through compromise and consensus. that is what i work to do as your president. to forge bipartisan agreement where possible and where it is needed. amy: progressives who oppose the deal said -- cited new cuts on key social programs and expanded work requirements for some recipients of food stamps. the legislation was called a dirty deal by climate activists because it rolls back the national environmental policy act and fast-tracks the approval and construction of the fracked gas mountain valley pipeline through west virginia and virginia -- a pet project of the powerful conservative

democratic west virginia senator joe manchin. meanwhile, critics say love is prevented the debt deal such as closing tax loopholes and repealing high-income tax cuts. independent senator bernie sanders spoke. >> in this moment in american history we have a choice. either we abdicate our responsibilities to our kids in future generations and we allow a handful of billionaires to consolidate their wealth and their power, or we stand up and fight back. amy: for more we are joined in denver, colorado, by david sirota, award-winning investigative journalist and founder of the news website the lever where his latest piece is headlined "this is what biden says is a 'big win'." sirota is also editor at large for jacobin. welcome back to democracy now! ok, can you lay out who you

think gained and lost in this historic debt signing deal? historic because it would have been the first time, if it had not been signed, that the country defaulted? >> certainly the fossil fuel industry is the big winner here. mountain valley pipeline, expediting that controversial pipeline, which many say will be a climate bomb at a time -- a climate emergency, the fossil fuel industry is a big winner. also military contractors. it approved the pentagon budget going up to another record level. private student lenders who have wanted the end of the student lending moratorium, they are big winners. they have been lobbing that. one stop again rising as soon as this was being finalized. in the very rich. there were no measures in this

debt bill to repeal the high income tax cuts that are responsible -- primarily responsible for the increase in the debt ratio that was supposed to be at issue in this bill. in fact, in addition to not repealing the science and tax cuts, the bill also cuts a large amount of funding from the irs. the irs specifically, it functions to enforce the basic tax laws already on the books as they relate to the very wealthy. we have a very big situation in this country were hundred civilians of dollars of owed taxes go unpaid by the richest americans. that funding was supposed to be to do that kind of crackdown and now it has been moved out into other programs. those are the big winners in this bill. amy: the losers? >> losers are everybody else. the losers, in particular, very poor people -- as you discussed,

the changes to the food stamp program to make it harder for lots of people to access food stamps at a time of an affordability crisis. that is a big loss. i think student debtors, again, we're in the middle of an affordability crisis you have student debt payments that are going to start up again. basically, the working class at this country was deeply harmed by this bill. the president celebrating this bill as a big win. instead of saying this is something we had to do -- we can go over if he had to do it. he did not have to do it. instead of saying we had to do this, it is unfortunate, going out and celebrating this as a big win is an omission about what the democratic president and the democratic party see as a win and for whom they want to secure such victories. it is all now out on the table. it is there for everybody to

see. it is important to remember we did not have to be at this point. the democratic party controlled both houses of congress in the lame-duck and shows not to pass a clean debt ceiling bill. they chose not to. at the time, senator did durbin simply said the party did not feel like making time at the end of the congressional session to do that. the point being is this is exactly the result the democratic party wanted. they wanted to work with republicans to get to these exact policies. and now they are celebrating them. we need to take a moment to say, this is what the democratic president and the democratic party, working alongside the republican, this is what it wants. amy: obviously, you agree that if the u.s. had defaulted it would have created an absolute catastrophe. but you say aside from even having negotiated the deal in

the lame-duck, that biden has the option of the 14th mm and did not take it. talk about the significance of that. >> the constitution makes it pretty clear that the u.s. government is empowered of of statutes, if you will, to deal with the debt and make sure it does not default on its debts. progressive lawmakers had asked the biden administration to use this power to avert this entire manufactured crisis. almost as soon as that proposal was floated by those lawmakers, the biden white house said no, they're not going to pursue it. you put that together with they did not try to pass a debt ceiling bill in the lame-duck session and what you see is a picture of a party that wanted this outcome. overlay it with one other layer, the fact that joe biden throughout his career has given floor speeches on the floor the

senate, has made clear he wants to work with republicans to cut spending, cut funding for social programs. i think we have to step back and realize this is a moment of honesty, a moment of clarity of where at least the leadership of the democratic party is when it comes to things like budget austerity. amy: let me ask you about your piece on republican presidential hopeful ron desantis, florida governor in which you report how desantis' fundraising first 2024 presidential bid could be hindered by federal pay to payroll that restricts -- federal pay-to-play rule that restricts campaign contributions from financial executives to state officials who control pension investment decisions. explain. >> ron desantis is the governor is one of three people who controls florida's massive pension system.

about 10, 15 years ago, and anticorruption law was passed in the wake of scandals which said basically the financial managers who are given money to manage by public officials to manage those moneys on behalf of retirees, they cannot give money to politicians who control that money because the decisions about who gets to invest those moneys need to be made based purely on merit not on political influence. as we reported the lever and folks can find it online, our story shows desantis -- under desantis, florida pension money was moved to various financial firms whose executives were giving money to political groups that ultimately ended up boosting ron desantis' political campaign. there's a question about whether they used intermediary groups to try to get around that very clear anticorruption law. but moving forward, as desantis

tries to raise money for his presidential campaign, this anticorruption law is there to make sure financial managers benefiting from his decisions and how he apportions the retirement funding for teachers, firefighters, other public employees, that that rule is there to try to make sure he does not use that leverage, isn't able to use that leverage to raise money for financial firms like to get that money and earn big fees off that money. it could provide a series obstacle for desantis to raise lots of money if that law is enforced. amy: you say this is in a theoretical -- about a decade ago, chris christie who is running again as well as rick perry, both based the same obstacle with her own gop presidential campaigns.

>> look, it is a very clear law. let's be clear how it works. it is designed to deter the financial managers from giving them money because the financial managers are the ones who can get punished. if you give money, if you are a giant private equity firm and give money -- were executives give money to ron desantis and the florida pension fund is giving you money to manage come the lock can basically say you cannot manage that money anymore. it creates a financial deterrent to wall street firms to engage in that kind of financial fundraising for political campaigns. yes, it could be a huge obstacle for desantis. but again, go back to "if," will the biden administration securities and exchange commission actually enforce this law? will the law actually be taken seriously by regulators?

will the lobby applied to super pac's, some of which seem designed to get around these kinds of laws? that is the big question for campaign-finance here right now. amy: david sirota, as many republican presidential candidates will throw their hat in the ring from south carolina's tim scott as well as nikki haley to chris christie to the north carolina -- north dakota governor and of course desantis, if you can talk about -- and vice president pence this week, what you are watching? >> look, i think republican primary is going to be essentially an arms race for how extreme each candidate can try to position themselves. they will try to be in a battle to show who is more extreme on immigration, on budget cutting, workstream on try to push for larger pentagon budgets and the like. i think watching that and see how extreme it gets is going to

be important. i think on the democratic side, seeing whether the party is going to pursue an agenda which says we are a party that is going to deliver for the working class or whether the parties going to try to position itself in much the way you heard joe biden try to position himself as a "bipartisan conciliator." my view is the democratic party has a very, very serious risk in the selection if it is not constantly showing it is delivering for the working class. if it is trying only show it wants to work with republicans instead of saying "our agenda is to deliver real material gains for the working class," if the parties agenda is not that, if it is more about bipartisan conciliation acid, i think that puts at risk and very real way the 2024 election. amy: david sirota is an award-winning investigative journalist and founder of the news website the lever. we will link to your pieces "this is what biden says is a 'big win'."

as well as your piece on ron desantis and wall street. coming up, we continue our conversation with the father who spent 20 years trying to hold the billionaire sackler family accountable for its role in the opioid epidemic and the death of his 18-year-old son. back in 30 seconds. ♪♪ [music break] amy: "memory" by tomberlin. this is democracy now! i'm amy goodman. we turn to the opioid academic which has killed over heavenly people in the u.s. over the last

20 years. last week a federal appeals court granted members of the billionaire sackler family immunity from all current and future civil litigation related to their role in creating and fueling the epidemic. in exchange for civil liability, the sacklers have agreed to pay a $6 billion settlement over some 18 years. due to the terms, the sacklers are expected to keep much of their fortune. we turn now to part two of our conversation with ed bisch, the founder of rapp. he formed the group after his 18 on son eddie died of an oxycontin-related overdose in 2001. first, we go to investigative reporter christopher glazek who wrote the first article in 2017 documenting how the sacklers were profiting from the highly addictive drug. i asked him to talk more about who the sacklers are.

>> the sacklers have been one of the richest families in the united states for decades. you know, they first got super rich in the 1960's, actually with a different drug, with valium. and, you know, their billions and billions came in the 1990's with oxycontin. and what the sacklers have always been really, really good at is selling a highly addictive drug, often a deadly drug, in the case of oxycontin, and they've been really, really good at getting doctors to prescribe this addictive drug for an enormous universe of patients. so originally, they had this other drug, basically the same as oxycontin, except it was morphine instead of oxycodone. and that originally was just for cancer patients. and that was in the 1980's. and people kind of figured, "ok, if you have terminally -- terminal cancer, who cares if you get addicted? you're going to die. we don't really care what happens in the last year of your life."

well, what the sacklers did when that drug ran out of patent, they said, "what if we took basically the same drug, and instead of targeting it at cancer patients, we targeted it at any patient who had any kind of pain? it could be a toothache. it could be menstrual pain. it could be back pain. it could be a headache. and what if we said, 'this isn't something just for terminally ill patients or for temporary pain. this is for life'?" someone could be an oxycontin for the rest of their life because they deal with some kind of chronic pain. and then the problem, as it turned out, was that you build tolerance to oxycontin. so in order to get the same effects, you have to increase your dose more and more each time. we have evidence of the sacklers in board meetings saying, "we need to make sure doctors are prescribing the highest possible doses." and they wanted to do that because that was how they made the most money. they made money per volume. and so we see the sacklers, as individuals, repeatedly, over years, saying, "we need to increase the doses. we need to increase the doses."

amy: now, of course, they could say, "well, it's doctors who are prescribing this drug. we simply make the drug. why are we responsible?" explain how the whole system worked and how the pr and the lobbying fit together with the science and the making of the drug. >> it's very interesting. the sacklers were real pioneers in the field of pharmaceutical advertising. and the patriarch of the family is actually the first inductee in what is called the pharmaceutical advertising hall of fame. and what he learned is that doctors, like ordinary people, are very susceptible to forms of advertising. the first insight he had is if you take out an ad in a prestigious medical journal, like a print ad, and you have it right next to these, you know, academic studies, that people take that ad really seriously. the doctors think that it counts for something. but that wasn't the only thing they did. they also effectively, bribed

doctors. they had these organizations that would fly doctors out to pebble beach or fancy beach locations. and maybe the doctor would give a talk, and they'd give them a thousand bucks and this free trip. they had this really elaborate, complicated system of kickbacks that targeted every link in the chain -- government regulators, pharmacies, patients got rebates on their first prescription which is kind of like a drug dealer giving you a freebie that gets you hooked, and then the doctors themselves had all kinds of incentives that were thrown their way. so the sacklers have been very, very adept from the beginning at targeting every person in the chain, that gets from factory to patient, and making sure that they all get their kickback, which keeps the system and the cycle going. amy: i'd like to go back to the 1998 purdue pharma marketing video. >> once you've found the right

doctor and have told him or her about your pain, don't be afraid to take what they give you. often, it will be an opioid medication. some patients may be afraid of taking opioids because they're perceived as too strong or addictive. but that is far from actual fact. less than 1% of patients taking opioids actually become addicted. and any drowsiness that might occur when you start to take the medication will soon wear off in most patients. amy: this was procured by stat, the medical publication showing that ad. so we could see how purdue pharma marketed themselves. only 1% -- or they say less than 1% of patients get addicted, chris. can you talk about that? >> so that is nonsense and is

built on these faulty studies, many of which aren't even studies. i mean, one of the things that the sacklers would cite, there was like a letter to the editor in a journal, like in a -- that, you know, suggested in some very weird group of population of patients that the rate of addiction was super low. but it's total nonsense. it's a lie. and the sacklers lied about how addictive the drug was in order to convince doctors and patients that it wasn't dangerous, because there was actually a lot of fear of opioids in the 1990's, you know, coming out of the heroin epidemic in the 1970's and 1980's, and the sacklers set out to change the brand of opioids. and they undertook this really concerted, elaborate process. they created these kind of astroturf, kind of fake patient groups to launch what was called the pain movement. and they essentially rebranded opioids and pain relief as a kind of sacred human right that

everyone should have access to. now, people should have access to pain relief and i wouldn't contest that. but the sacklers, what they really wanted to do is they wanted to get rid of this fear of opioids. they called it opiophobia. and then they called the addiction threat pseudo addiction. and they were actually very effective at getting people to kind of break down their fear over what opioids could do. of course, as it turns out, those fears were really, really well founded. and what we now know after a couple studies have been done -- people ask, "ok, well, how important were the sacklers really? this was one company. didn't other pharmaceutical companies get involved?" and it's really important to understand that purdue pharma and the sacklers built this market. and we can see, even today, there are studies that have gone back and seen the places in the country where the sacklers put the most marketing dollars.

and we can see that 20 years later, those places still have more deaths, more addiction than neighboring states which previously had been, you know, maybe the same. but we see that once the sacklers got to town and deployed their armies of sales reps, that those places, even 20 years later, have much higher rates of addiction and death. amy: which brings us to ed bisch. i just showed that purdue pharma marketing video from 1998. ed that was three years before eddie, your 18-year-old son, died in 2001. can you tell us eddie's story? >> yes. so eddie was in -- he was a high school senior, normal kid. the first time i heard the word "oxycontin," my son was in his bed, dead. that's the very first time i heard the word "oxycontin."

ok? that was in february of 2001. in august of 2001 was the very first congressional hearing on oxycontin. i went to that hearing not really knowing, you know, purdue's story. and at that hearing, the congressman grilled the purdue exec, and he said -- well, this was in philadelphia and there was a pill mill doctor flooding philadelphia with pills. and he told the purdue exec, "you knew exactly, through ims data, how many pills this doctor was putting on the street. why didn't you contact authorities?" well, he started mumbling something. then his lawyer jumped in and he gave some legalese answer but not really a valid answer. and that's when i first started

having a bad feeling. because up until that point, my mission was just to warn kids about oxycontin. but as i slowly learned more through newspaper articles and talking to patients who got addicted or talking to family members whose relative died after they were prescribed it -- 2003, there were so many parents i was talking to, we got to do something. and i saw a picture in the paper of three moms, stood outside of purdue pharma with posters of their dead kids. and i said, "that's a great idea." i went out of my way. i contacted one of the moms. i said, ok. we got a tip. purdue was having a seminar in florida, orlando, florida, a lavish resort. and about 20 of us parents all

over the country, we decided to do something. and we said, "we got to give ourselves a name. what are we going to call ourselves?" we came up with rapp, relatives against purdue pharma. so we held the second protest. this was in 2003. so nothing much changed except the death count kept on going up. as more and more oxy sales went up, more and more deaths. 2001, there was 14,000 deaths. last year, there was over 100,000 deaths. i watched this thing mushroom. 2007, i was allowed to give a victim statement at the purdue pharma trial. we didn't know, and the judge -- the judge was apologetic to us, that he wanted to give them jail time but he says, "the guidelines. i have to go by the guidelines." what he didn't know, there was a

120-page prosecution memo calling for felony charges that the very top of the doj sat on, 120 pages. there's a six-page summary summarizing that. that 120-page memo is still under seal. "painkiller" comes out august 10. this was also covered in "dopesick" on hulu, but "painkiller" i have high hopes, and i know it's going to be good. and so that's 2007. if that memo wasn't buried, we would -- we wouldn't have 100,000 deaths. it is the pills that are fueling the opioid epidemic, which is now a fentanyl poison epidemic. but kids, you know -- like chris said, they changed medical thinking. there were so many pills on the street.

kids are kids. unfortunately, they experiment and they try this oxy. it makes them feel good. they don't know the hell that they're going to face. and some of them don't face hell, they just die. and that's what happened to my son. but if that 120-page memo wasn't buried -- so they pleaded guilty to a felony in 2007. in 2020, they pleaded guilty to three more felonies for almost the exact same thing. again, they just pay a fine. you know, fines without any prosecutions, there is no deterrent. they look at it as the cost of doing business. punishable by fine means legal for a price. amy: i mean -- >> so and the sad thing is, other companies saw what purdue

got away with and they emulated them. amy: ed, you clearly have had an enormous effect. "new york times" article i'm looking at headlined "the four ordinary people who took on big pharma." and in that, it talks about how, first, you wanted to believe the excuses -- purdue's excuses. you were even persuaded to change the name of your message board to "oxy abuse kills." explain what that was all about . you used to call it "foxy kills -- "oxy kills." and then the offer that purdue pharma made to you and your group, rapp, relatives against purdue pharma. >> ok, so my son died on a monday. that sunday, i was on a tv show, talk show in philadelphia, where

i'm at now. and after the show, i had three people -- before that, i had started a little message board. after the show, three people offered to build me a website. i took the first caller up on him, and i called it "oxy kills." all a sudden, i'm getting all these emails from irate pain patients telling me -- some of them are nasty, saying my son deserved to die and people like my son are stopping them from getting the medicine they need. and i was shocked. and i would, you know, try to reason with some of them and explain, "look, i just want to warn kids not to abuse this drug, because it'll kill them." about three weeks in, i get an email from someone at purdue pharma. and it was very cordial. and they said, "we want you to

know our drug's great if properly used." i had no reason to doubt that. it's fda-approved, right? so you know, we went back and forth and it was very cordial, but they were very defensive. any time i would bring up any news story, or i heard from this patient who got addicted, you know, they told me less than 1% of people get addicted. i heard all their lines. and, you know, it wasn't until august when i went to that congressional hearing, i started to sense something. but at the time, you know, i was getting flooded with these emails from chronic pain patients. so anyway, purdue made me an offer. they said, "if you ever want to do anything with prescription drug abuse, let us know," because they know -- they knew i was going around with the philadelphia police department

and talking at high schools, and i talked at my son's high school. and, you know, so i decided, i said, "ok." i said, "i'll change" -- you know, it was my idea, because i didn't know exactly why all these people were so irate. here, i found out a lot of the pain organizations that purdue funded actually got their members fired up. and, you know, that was causing a lot of this trouble. and the story that patients couldn't get their drugs, well, sales kept on going up and up. so to make a long story short, i went up to purdue pharma and i met with the medical director j. david haddox. and, you know, i said, "ok, i'm going to change my -- you know, for a small donation, i'm going to -- which will help me buy a

laptop" -- which was very expensive back then and software to give presentations on my own, because the philadelphia police would give me five minutes to talk about pills. and pills were the latest thing, and that's what killed my son, so i wanted to talk a lot more about them. so anyway, when i went up there, i said, "the only thing that's bothering me is i'm getting a lot of emails from people who got prescribed oxy and then got addicted, or i'm hearing from their relatives and they're dead after being prescribed." and he said to me -- he looked at me right in my face, and he says, "well, less than 1% of people get addicted, so they must have been doing something wrong." he says, "and all these stories are really, really stopping patients from getting the pills, you know, the drug that they need." i said, "oh, so sales are down?" he looked me in the face.

he says, "yes, a lot." so i went away and i started my program and i felt really uneasy then. three months later, i almost fell off my chair. headline in the paper, "oxycontin sales up 24% in the last year." i knew right then and there that i was being played and the country was being played. and then i'm really starting to investigate. and like i said, you know, that's it. that was around 2003. and, you know, we formed rapp. and we did that first protest, which was the second one against them. we went to fda hearings. we went to trials. we did a couple more protests. a lot of rapp members got to speak at the 2007 hearing -- or, not hearing, sentencing.

and like i say, we didn't know -- we didn't know about that 120-page memo. we really didn't know about the sacklers because they hid themselves. it wasn't until chris came out with his article that the world really realized how hands-on and involved the sacklers were. and, you know, it's just -- i don't have regrets about that. but i'm sure -- i pray the people who sat on that memo and didn't allow justice back in 2007, because there's so many more people now addicted or dead who should never have been dead -- and like i said, a lot of mistakes were made in the past, but the doj can make amends by doing the right thing. just follow the money. follow the evidence you have in

your possession. there's been over 10 books written about this. 2003, "painkiller," the very first book, 2003. 2001, the very first hearing, congressional hearing, on oxy deaths. the evidence is there. just use it. do your job. amy: so i want to turn -- >> and that's what i pray for. amy: i want to turn to the level of activism that has really turned this story around, or, i should say, exposed it, that you were a part of, ed bisch. let's turn to the trailer of the documentary film directed by laura poitras called "all the beauty and the bloodshed." the film follows the renowned artist nan goldin and her activism to hold the sackler family accountable for their role in fueling the opioid crisis. >> there's the sackler family, of the art world, the museum world, and philanthropy. and then there's the big pharma

marketing and addiction and death. >> my anger at the sackler family, it's personal. when you think of the profit off people's pain, you can only be furious. >> nan said, "i think we should take these people down. but do you think my career will implode?" and i said, "probably." >> we need to demand that the met museum, the louvre, the tate refuse donations from the sacklers and take down their name. amy: so that's a clip from "all the beauty and the bloodshed." i wanted to bring christopher glazek back into this conversation, as you talked about activism turning this around. talk about who nan goldin is and the impact not only of nan and ed bisch, but so many thousands

of people who decided that the courts were not enough, that the legal system wasn't going to do it, and what they did. >> yeah. so i mean, it's really interesting, in particular, what nan goldin was able to accomplish in the art world. so nan is a legendary photographer from the 1970's and 1980's. she herself developed an addiction to opioids, which really put a stop to her career for a while. and, you know, she basically read my article that was in esquire and then another article in the new yorker that came out a couple weeks later and she got incensed. she had never heard of the sacklers. she had heard a little bit about purdue, and she knew that oxycontin was the thing that hooked her, but she didn't know that there was actually a single family behind it. so you know, at that time, in late 2017, there was a lot of media attention around this.

but as i said, you know, that burst of media attention did not convince the major museums or institutions to cut links with the sacklers. they all said, "this isn't really our business. we don't know where the money comes from. the sacklers never told us where it came from. and, you know, we would prefer to stay out of this." well, then nan starts doing these really high-profile actions in museums, like she went to the met, to the temple of dendur, had hundreds of people come throwing prescription bottles with messages on them. she did another action in the guggenheim. and she had experience also from aids activism, taking cues from act up. she knew how to make a media spectacle, and she got a lot of people's attention in the art world that way. and because nan herself was a famous artist, she was also able to threaten to pull out of shows, remove her work from museums. and she really forced those museum directors to get serious about starting to take down the

name, which was hard for them because they had contracts with the sacklers. it wasn't like so straightforward to take down the name. but she really held their feet to the fire. you know, there's been activism, obviously, from families and individuals stretching back to the early 2000's. ed was a part of that. and, you know, what that -- you know, and that activism did result in something. it resulted in this prosecution in 2007 where executives at the company, three of them, did actually have to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges. but they were kind of the fall guys. you know, the name that never came up anywhere in that trial, and as ed has said, he wasn't even really aware of, was the name sackler. because the sacklers made sure that their name was scrubbed. there was this, you know, other kind of side deal agreement, a non-prosecution agreement from 2007 in which the sacklers were exempted from any kind of prosecution, so -- which is important to point out also with

this question now, could the sacklers be prosecuted? well, they can't be prosecuted for anything before 2007, because the government already agreed to make them immune for that. so it would have to be something later than 2007, although there's plenty of crimes since then. nan started this groundswell in the art world. and you kind of, you know, over time, started to see the dominoes falling -- the louvre in paris, the guggenheim, the met. you know, in the u.k., it's taken a little bit longer, but now we've started to see action there also. the academy really was a lot slower. and something that just interested me, that surprised me, we never had a nan goldin medical professor. there's all these medical schools all over the world that have sackler in their name whether it's the whole school or an institute or an endowed chair. and you never had any of these professors raise a stink about, "hey, you know, should we really -- we're professional healers. should we really be taking this sackler money?" and i think that what nan

goldin's example teaches us is that it really just takes one person with influence in a professional world and they can really accomplish a lot. just, you know, her example is so inspirational. the movie that just came out is amazing, "all the beauty and the bloodshed." you know, i would hope that more people would kind of take from that example. didn't really happen in the academe up to now. but, you know, i'm hopeful that there will be further movement there. and because i want to go to another clip of "all the beauty and the bloodshed." in the clip, you hear a 911 called play during a court hearing where the sacklers were forced to listen to the families of the victims.

>> four thousand eight hundred and four days. richard, if you're still listening, that's how many days since i have made that horrifying call. i have lived with the pain and heartache as a result of the loss of my only child, a pain you will never understand. >> i can only echo the pain and suffering that kristy feels and that all of us that are here today feel. i want to point out to the sacklers that by the time this two-hour hearing is over, we can add 16 more people to your death list. amy: christopher glazek, if you could describe what we just

watched and listened to? we're talking about a court hearing where the sacklers had to listen to this with family members hearing their own 911 call of hysteria, losing a loved one. the significance of this moment? again, that was from laura poitras' "all the beauty and the bloodshed." >> it's been this decades-long struggle for accountability to force the sacklers to appear in public to answer to the victims. and this was a stipulation of one of the agreements, that the sacklers had to send the representatives of the family and they had to hear the victims talking directly to their face, something they had not done in 20 years, as they built the largest pharmaceutical fortune in history from this deadly drug. amy: and in the last minute we have, we give that minute to ed bisch. here we are in 2023.

your final message to the world? >> 2023, please, public citizen has a letter to the doj. you can just sign your name, send them an email. i was also able to give testimony at that. richard sackler would not show his face. that's how much of a coward he is. ok? but he had to listen. he had to watch us. and i think it was 20-some -- 20-plus of us gave him hell. did he care? i doubt it. but it felt good. and i'm proud to say that lady who you just heard, kristy nelson, she is now a member of amy: ed bisch form the group rapp after his 18-year-old son died of anoxic cut-related overdose in 2001.

thanks also to investigative reporter christopher glazek spoke to us from mexico city. in 2017, he wrote a piece for esquire headlined of secretive family making billions from the opioid crisis." to see part one, go

hanting fore] matt davis: bali is one of the world's most popular holiday destinations, but has it become a victim of its own success? wayan: tourism started to explode. more people's coming in from outside than the peoples living here. matt: decades of unhinged tourist development has come at a cost. gary bencheghib: the island of gods had become the island of trash. [singing foreign language] matt: now, mostly closed to the outside world,